Hacker News: Aromasin

New comment by Aromasin in "The first British person in space"

Aromasin — Fri, 22 May 2026 09:13:46 +0000

The one thing British people do preen about with regards to technology is cars, but I think that has more to do with the cultural influence of Top Gear than it does the history.

New comment by Aromasin in "Europe built sovereign clouds to escape US control. Forgot about the processors"

Aromasin — Sat, 16 May 2026 12:26:41 +0000

They are pivoting to become a fabless chip company as of last year (the decision happened a few years back): https://www.wired.com/story/chip-design-firm-arm-is-making-i...

I'd also argue that while Softbank has capital ownership of the company, the leadership structure and how that capital is allocated is still done within the UK with standard board oversight. I know a few of the leadership team personally, and they have a wide remit, almost more so than a public company might do.

New comment by Aromasin in "Europe built sovereign clouds to escape US control. Forgot about the processors"

Aromasin — Sat, 16 May 2026 12:20:15 +0000

The author is a Dutch journalist with no technology background. I wouldn't jump to get my information from this source. As a person who works in the UK semiconductor industry, I noticed 4 or 5 glaring holes in the article in just the first couple of paragraphs.

New comment by Aromasin in "Making the news available at no cost is a victory"

Aromasin — Thu, 14 May 2026 12:17:04 +0000

While I do disgree with the "state funded media scope" - I'd go as far as saying the BBC has become so fearful to rock the boat in any way that it is at risk of becoming a redundant source - I do think the lack of "competition" for BBC funding leads to a worse journalistic rigour. It's not the centre of excellence for journlism it once was, and is often looked down on when compared to other paid news outlets like the Economist, Atlantic, the FT, et ceterea. Adding an element of competition into the equation could make for better journalism, but equally, that would likely require more funding in the end.

New comment by Aromasin in "Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license"

Aromasin — Wed, 06 May 2026 19:17:27 +0000

You're implying that Sales, Marketing, and Distribution is not a valuable service by saying 30% is not reasonable. I work in the electronics industry selling components. Suppliers regularly give us 30% margin, far more on some products, despite the upfront cost of making a new microcontroller or FPGA being far in excess of the most expensive video games ever made, with our value add being, to be frank, much less than Steam. 30% margin is about average for distribution, be it food, minerals, cars, or any other industry.

If I didn't have Steam (or equivalent service like GoG), I wouldn't buy new games. That's just reality. I would play the same games I have for decades. Instead, Steam has created a very effective recommendation engine that gives me a great selection. That's more than worth a 30% cut.

New comment by Aromasin in "The great Scouse pasty war"

Aromasin — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 06:24:35 +0000

I want to make clear to the US folks here that there's about 2 or 3 cafes that still sell traditional eels, and it's explicitly a London food, not wider British cuisine. From the number of videos and articles I see about them though, you'd think the country was covered in Eel cafés. Honestly, covering them at all is tabloid ragebait content at this point.

New comment by Aromasin in "Say No to Palantir in Europe"

Aromasin — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:52:17 +0000

It's a European issue because we look to the US and now appreciate more than ever the need to introduce barriers to stop temporary fascist governments doing the same permanent damage they have done in the US. Our democratic systems are just as vulnerable to populist leaders taking power. One of those barriers we must erect is the elimination of corporation with unfettered access to institutional data that can be used by fascist governments to maintain or grow their power base.

New comment by Aromasin in "Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died"

Aromasin — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 19:33:19 +0000

Wow. I picked up a copy of Hyperion this morning while taking a random stroll through town - something I rarely do during a work day anymore. I popped into a book shop on a complete whim, and picked it up as it had been on my list for a while. The coincidence feels deeply uncanny.

New comment by Aromasin in "Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown"

Aromasin — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 15:37:47 +0000

The key part is that there are multiple insurgencies going on simultaneously. There are separatist movements that are looking to create new nations states, while simultaneous there are non-violent protests ongoing, generally looking for regime change and a move away from extremists religious tendencies. Both can be true simultaneously.

New comment by Aromasin in "Claude Sonnet 4.6"

Aromasin — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 19:49:39 +0000

We recently had an employee leave our team, posting an extensive essay on LinkedIn, "exposing" the company and claiming a whole host of wrong-doing that went somewhat viral. The reality is, she just wasn't very good at her job and was fired after failing to improve following a performance plan by management. We all knew she was slacking and despite liking her on a personal level, knew that she wasn't right for what is a relatively high-functioning team. It was shocking to see some of the outright lies in that post, that effectively stemmed from bitterness at being let go.

The 'boy (or girl) who cried wolf' isn't just a story. It's a lesson for both the person, and the village who hears them.

New comment by Aromasin in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me"

Aromasin — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:16:04 +0000

It's a British word for someone or something that's ugly, dirty or unpleasant. Generally it was used to be derogatory about women - ie. "she's minging mate". I believe it originally came from the Scots, where the word 'ming' comes from the old Scottish English word for 'bad smell' or 'human excrement'. It was in wide spread use in the South of the UK while I was growing up.

See here for background: https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/...

New comment by Aromasin in "Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to"

Aromasin — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:07:54 +0000

Long-form news outlets (ie, weekly/monthly/quarterly release) tend to not fall into that scummy, data-mining behaviour the daily news outlets do from my experience. Subscribe to something like the Economist, Private Eye (if in the UK), the Atlantic, or Delayed Gratification instead. They tend to hire well reasoning journalists that do research with due dilligence.

New comment by Aromasin in ""Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker"

Aromasin — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:17:33 +0000

Yes, humans can be greedy - but the question is whether we design our society to encourage and legitimize that greed in every sphere of life, or whether we maintain non-market norms that check it. The journalistic integrity example proves my/Sandel's point; when ethics became profitable, the market accidentally aligned with civic good. But the concern is precisely about areas where market logic systematically corrupts rather than improves outcomes - ie. where introducing money changes the nature of the good itself (like turning civic duty into a fee, or learning into a transaction). The pendulum swings, yes - which is exactly why we need ongoing public debate about where markets belong, rather than passively accepting their expansion into every domain and hoping the pendulum swings back on its own.

New comment by Aromasin in ""Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker"

Aromasin — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:13:08 +0000

The objection is that offering cash exploits vulnerable women's desperation, treating their reproductive capacity as a commodity to be purchased. Even if the outcome might prevent more suffering, which is an individually subjective outcome, the means matters: it degrades the women involved by reducing a profound personal decision to a market transaction under conditions of coercion, where drug addiction makes the offer 'too good to resist.'

New comment by Aromasin in ""Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker"

Aromasin — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:09:24 +0000

Thank you, but again I'm just paraphrasing Sandel's work. He really puts into words that which I've personally felt without having the vernacular to put it into words myself (alongside one of his inspirations, Michael Young). I attended a couple of his lectures while he was in the UK, and he was fantastic.

New comment by Aromasin in ""Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker"

Aromasin — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:53:52 +0000

Michael Sandel's "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets" covers it quite well.

Markets create unfairness by systematically disadvantaging the poor when money becomes necessary to obtain certain goods or quality of goods. Market values corrupt non-market spheres by changing the meaning and value of goods being exchanged (e.g., paying for grades undermines intrinsic desire to learn). Monetary incentives crowd out altruistic motivations and civic duty (e.g., fines becoming fees people willingly pay rather than norms to uphold). Commodification degrades human dignity (e.g., treating drug-addicted women as "baby-making machines" in sterilization-for-cash programs). Markets increase wealth inequality and create segregation in previously egalitarian spaces (e.g., luxury skyboxes in sports stadiums). Market exchanges under severe inequality or economic necessity become coercive, not truly voluntary. Purchased tokens of friendship and personal expressions (apologies, wedding toasts) lose their authenticity and dilute social bonds. Wealthy individuals and countries can pay their way out of moral obligations (e.g., carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions). Markets have infiltrated areas traditionally governed by ethical considerations - medicine, education, personal relationships - without public debate about whether this is desirable. The economic approach treats everything in an ethical vacuum, ignoring morality in favor of purely analyzing incentives.

New comment by Aromasin in "Don't rent the cloud, own instead"

Aromasin — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:03:11 +0000

If this were cyclical, I'd be inclined to agree, but this seems to be more of a wave. I also think the push back is more than just one against rented compute. It is tied to a societal ennui that comes from the feeling that we no longer own anything, be it music, housing, movies, land, tools, phones, or cars. Everything is moving to either being rented or on credit. There's a push back against this self-made feudal revival, and that scales all the way from individuals through to corporations; in this case, against the idea that a mega-corporation gets to decide how and when you get to use your compute, and at what variable price.

New comment by Aromasin in "ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions"

Aromasin — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 09:39:16 +0000

I know it's ironic to say this about Intel, a notoriously management heavy company, but they did do the dual tracks which I always appreciated. A principal engineer was functionally on par with a senior manager, and a fellow with a VP. This meant that good engineers weren't forced into roles they weren't interested in, and why many stayed there 20+ years.

The issue is, even with two tracks, there's every chance that more people end up taking the management path because it's seen as an easy way to climb the ranks. Your success can be built from your teams success, rather than your own individual contribution.

New comment by Aromasin in "American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis"

Aromasin — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 17:19:55 +0000

That is populism in a nutshell. It is anti-rationalism at its heart. There's no real ideology - that's how it applies to both Chávez and Trump, Corbyn and Orbán. People want to believe what feels "instinctively" correct, because the intellectual overhead of modern society leaves the majority of the population unable to deal with the reality that political and economic systems are incredibly difficult to understand without hours of study and thought. That is uncomfortable, so people rebel against intellectualism, because it's easier to be told lies through 30-second videos and feel well informed, rather than sitting through a 20-hour session that one might need to truly understand a niche of a niche. The more they read, the less they understand, so disengage from it altogether and go with their gut (designed for tribes of monkeys) because the cognitive overload is too much to bear.

New comment by Aromasin in "Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back"

Aromasin — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 12:36:00 +0000

I jumped mid-career, and there were a few places I started before diving into live hardware projects (which is the only way to go from student to practitioner).

FPGA basics: https://nandland.com/fpga-101/

Verilog basics: https://hdlbits.01xz.net/wiki/Main_Page

Projects: https://www.hackster.io/fpga/projects